Angus Reid Finds Liberals and Conservatives Tied

Polling firm Angus Reid has released their midterm report card for Justin Trudeau and alongside it some very interesting information.

The polling agency found that the Liberal and Conservative party are now matched in terms of intended support with both averaging roughly 35%. This is the third poll to find the Liberals and Conservatives extremely close and shows that this is an overall trend and is not an outlier.

They further found that although the Liberal party continues to dominate in Quebec the story is far different in other provinces they require to win such as British Columbia and Ontario, where the Conservative party leads or ties with the Liberal party.

The Problems

The polling found that the recent drop in support likely came from the following four issues where a majority of Canadians oppose the government’s actions.

Refugee Policy

the Trudeau government has chosen to raise immigration levels to 300,000 entries per year, within which 40,000 refugees will also be accepted.

While four-in-ten Canadians (39%) support such a target, (including half of B.C. residents), half of Canadians disapprove (51%). The largest group of Canadians, 32 per cent, say they strongly disapprove.

Electoral Reform

ultimately, the government claimed that a lack of consensus among Canadians was cause to abandon reform.

66% Canadians overwhelmingly say that the government made the wrong decision in this case.

Omar Khadr

In July, the government paid former child soldier and Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, $10.5 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against it.

60 per cent of Canadians said they disagreed with the decision.

Budget Deficit

Prime Minister Trudeau ran on a campaign promise to run “modest deficits” of roughly $10 billion for the first three years of his government.

Each of the first two years of the Liberal term saw projected deficits of close to $30 billion. The obviousness of this broken campaign promise is likely the prime reason why 70% of Canadians oppose the large-scale deficit spending.